cp -a

[stevenvachon]

preserve links and attributes

Not particularly useful to me, at least right now, but it might be a good goal to reach.

[davglass]

I think I'd rather support -p and work on links after that. Adding this into the stack shouldn't be too hard at all.

-p    Cause cp to preserve the following attributes of each source file in the copy:
modification time, access time, file flags, file mode, user ID, and group ID,
as allowed by permissions.

[stevenvachon]

cpy and its underlying cp-file both do this.